Kingston, NY – Please see the Assemblymember’s comment below:

“The Hudson Valley has the second lowest Pre-K access of any region in the state, and has increasingly become a place where young parents can’t afford to raise a family.I frequently hear from constituents who, even with two sources of income, struggle to afford a basic quality of life. Access to childcare is at the heart of this struggle. When a parent, almost always the mother, has to quit their job because they can’t access childcare, not only are we prohibiting women from doing the jobs they want to do, we’re also bringing that family down to a single source of income, which makes raising a family that much harder. I welcome the Governor's announcement today to add $470 million to the Pre-K system to increase the Hudson Valley’s access from 58% to 100% and look forward to fighting for a universal childcare program that applies to the whole state.To get there, we need permanent sources of funding, and that needs to come from making the wealthy and the biggest corporations pay their fair share of taxes. New York is one of the wealthiest states in the country, with a higher Gross Domestic Product than nations like Sweden and Denmark. New York City alone has 384,500 millionaires and 66 billionaires, and all of them just got a tax break from the Trump administration’s spending bill. Increasing taxes on large corporate profits to bring them up to what neighboring states like Connecticut and Delaware tax would generate $7 billion a year, and adding ten new personal income tax brackets to make the wealthy pay a progressively fairer rate would generate $20.4 billion per year for the state, money that can be invested back in programs like this that wouldlower the cost of living for everyone else.”